Everyone can relate to the idea of redemption.  I don’t mean in a religious sense, but getting another chance to succeed after failing the last time around.  Personally, if I thought about it for ten minutes, I would come up with a number of moments in my life that I wish I could do over.  But life usually doesn’t give us second chances, except when the failure involves sports.  In that case, you may get another chance simply because there’s always another season or, as is with Arthur the King, another race.

In The Beekeeper, Jason Statham plays Adam Clay, a literal beekeeper who works on the country estate of Phylicia Rashad’s Eloise.  How Rashad wound up in a Statham kick-punch vehicle I’ll never understand, but she’s a nice presence for as long as she’s around.  One day, Eloise gets a “Your computer is infected with a virus and you must call this number to clear it up” prompt on her laptop.  Like most senior citizens, she doesn’t know it’s a scam and calls the number.  The office she reaches has people wearing headsets and looks like a repurposed strip club, a telltale sign that the operation is not on the up-and-up.  The MO of this techno boiler room is to trick the person on the other end of the line to hand over their login credentials for their savings accounts.  For a movie that leaves reality behind fairly quickly, I have to acknowledge the filmmakers for using a relatable crime as the genesis for this story, and not the usual mobsters and drugs angle.

It’s easy to start believing in curses, when bad things keep happening to you.  For Kevin Von Erich (Zac Efron), the eldest brother of the family at the center of The Iron Claw, the idea of a curse goes from being laughable to credible with each mounting tragedy.  I can’t blame him for deciding that his children will not inherit the Von Erich last name, because if there really is a curse, it surely would pass over someone named Adkisson.

Priscilla opens with a signature Sofia Coppola montage.  Threaded with the credits are images  of personal items that belong to the eponymous character, as well as close-ups of her applying eyeliner and false eyelashes.  As it turns out, the special event in question is not just a very consequential one in Priscilla Presley’s life, but also one of the few instances where she will have the attention of the media.  When you’re married to The King of Rock & Roll, you have to make the most of what few opportunities have to make a good impression.  The irony of the event and Pricilla’s preparation for it speaks volumes about how dramatically her life had changed in the eight years since she met Elvis.